friend. such essential reporting. paola ramos, please come back. that's our show for this evening. it's now time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening lawrence. >> good evening alex, and before andrew weismann and glenn kirschner, i have an observation and a request. it's a question. my observation is my favorite thing on television last night had nothing to do with lighted christmas trees, it was chris hayes doing the farm report on your program, and the request is, could you please bring farmer hayes back at least once a month to keep us up to date on the price of eggs and everything else that you guys covered, because i'm telling you, it could have been the whole hour. i couldn't stop watching. >> he is so passionate about the price of eggs, for good reason. he is like the farmer of good news. he's there to tell you that turkey prices are down from where they were in 2019, and that eggs are cheap, so yeah. in the season of glad tidings, farmer chris hayes is our very own network santa. i'm happy to have him back for an hour, honestly. >> great television. dream we need more. >> thanks lawrence. >> thank you alex. we have breaking codefendant news tonight, don trump's criminal criminal codefendant in georgia, jeffrey clark, is under a bond order not to communicate with any of his codefendants in the case like donald trump. and so jeffrey clark, lonely jeffrey clark, has chosen today to communicate with me. because today is a day when he was exposed, as thinking out loud, that he might not be worthy to become the next attorney general of the united states, which he was secretly plotting to become with donald trump so that jeffrey clark could try to use the power and influence of the justice department to criminally overturn the results of the presidential election, a text exchange made public in court today revealed, washington post reporting the december 30th 2020 jeffrey clark, who was an obscure assistant attorney general overseeing some civil cases, discussed the plot for jeffrey clark to take over the justice department. the washington post reports the text saying i am praying, the justice department official told congressman scott perry, who less than two weeks earlier had arranged for clark to meet the president, and wonder if i am worthy or ready. you are the man. i have confirmed it, perry replied. god does what he does for a reason. if god chose lawyers, god would never choose jeffrey clark, the indicted lawyer. there is ample proof of that in the details of how jeffrey clark became an indicted codefendant of donald trump's in georgia. jeffrey clark was correct to, quote, wonder if i am worthy or ready. he wasn't. jeffrey clark wasn't worthy and was never going to be ready to become acting attorney general or to advise a president of the united states about anything involving the law at anytime. living under the lonely court order banning him from communicating with his criminal codefendants, jeffrey clark decided today was a good day to communicate with me because he took issue with my discussion on this program last night about donald trump's campaign announcement yesterday that he wants to use the government to close down msnbc. i pointed out that donald trump is so stupid he actually thinks that the government controls msnbc's access to, quote, free government approved airwaves. donald trump doesn't seem to know the cable television actually passes through a cable, not over the airwaves, thereby completely avoiding the jurisdiction of the fcc, which has never had one minute of control over cable television or cable news. i pointed out last night that the fcc does have control over nbc, cbs, and abc, which were founded as over-the-air broadcast networks. jeffrey clark mounted a lawyerly attack, in his way, against me on twitter, beginning with, lawrence, it's not enough that you're not very bright, it's your phony sanctimony that forces me to point this out. i don't know about you, but i have a feeling he would've attacked me even if for once i had managed to leave out the phony sanctimony. indicted lawyer jeffrey clark then wrote the wrong tweet, trying to insist that donald trump was right to say that cable television uses free airwaves. it was the most idiotic composition on that point that a lawyer or non lawyer could have possibly come up with. when jeffrey clark's plot to take over the justice department became public, every lawyer in america who was not also later indicted with donald trump wondered how jeffrey clark could be so stupid. today jeffrey clark, in his twitter communication with me, convinced me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he is even stupider than i thought. today donald trump got gagged once again, this time by an appeals court in the state of new york after 15 days of considering donald trump's appeal of gag orders against him and his lawyers in the civil fraud trial in new york, the appeals court reinstated both gag orders in fall, which another new york judge had temporarily blocked while the gag orders were being appealed. and to migrate personal relief, the appeals court in new york did it the old-fashioned way, without one word of explanation. in the 21st century, judges'written word count has skyrocketed, and to the point where we have become used to them issuing a lawyer written opinions on every judgment and ruling they reach, in pre trial proceedings and certainly appeals court opinions. it was not always this way. in fact, the four judges who consider the appeal to write a word about it. their finding was issued in writing today by a clerk of the appeals court to simply said, now, upon reading in filing the papers with respect to the motion, meaning trump's appeal, and do deliberation having been had there on, it is ordered that the motion is denied, the interim relief granted by order of a justice of the fort, meaning the temporary move block, the gag order, is hereby vacated, side suzannah molina rojas, clerk of the court. that's it. after all that expensive appeals lawyering by donald trump's lawyers, written briefs by both sides, everything is presented by the court security officer about how many hundreds of threats are phoned in every single day to the judge in the case and the judges clerk, who was working on the case, after all of that, donald trump's lawyers got one sentence. a one sentence order written by the clerk of the appeals court. immediately after the appeals court upheld his gag orders, judge arthur and gordon said, i intend to enforce the gag orders vigorously anyone make sure that council informed clients that the state was vacated. shortly after that, donald trump, who was not in court today, attacked the judge's wife, once again in a lying at social media post about her. the gag order prevents donald trump from attacking his favorite woman to attack before the gag order, who is the judge's law clark. now that that woman is protected by the gag order, donald trump has turned his threatening public harassment on another woman, the judge's wife. and this is where, once again, donald trump is getting extraordinarily special treatment. no judge in american history has ever allowed any other defendant to publicly attack a member of that judges family. we are awaiting a decision by the federal appeals court in washington, d. c., that is considering a similar gag order on donald trump the don trump's lawyers have appealed. the gag order was ordered by federal judge tanya chutkan in the oral arguments to the appeals court. it certainly sounded like each judge on the appeals court would support some version of that gag order in that case. not for discussion tonight is andrew weissmann, former fbi general counsel, former chief of criminal vision of the eastern district of new york, the coastal host of msnbc's podcast prosecuting donald trump. also with us, glenn kershner, former federal prosecutor and host of the justice matters podcast. they are both msnbc legal analysts. andrew weissmann, we learned a little more about jeffrey clark today in his moment of self doubt about being worthy to be acting attorney general. what is your reading about what this adds to our information about the case against jeffrey clark? >> it was very interesting way in which this became public. there has been a skirmish where senator perry was trying to block the special counsel jack smith from getting full access to information on his phone. then chief judge, beryl howell, and ruled in a way that was favorable to the government and in a really magisterial decision. that was then appealed. the court of appeals issued a decision that was much more favorable to mr. perry. a lot of the decisions were redacted and partially under seal. well, today, to get to the point, the circuit court made an error and they filed publicly the full decisions and the full docket. so you could see, for a fair amount of time, the actual evidence, which included numerous text messages and emails, some of which you cited as well. so there's a lot of evidence with respect to all sorts of people, but i think the senator looks like he's completely complicit with the january 6th insurrection. as you know from just a few days ago, we had the same concern with respect to senator grassley. and with jeffrey clark, if this evidence becomes something that jack smith can use, which would have been the case in judge howell's decision but is no longer appearing to be the case because of the circuit decision, it will be an extremely bad day for him. a bad day in terms of the proof that was just laid out. remember, this is contemporaneous texts and emails, with mr. perry communicating with all sorts of people in the then administration. >> glenn kirschner, congressman perry tries to tell jeffrey clark that he has been choice by god to be the next acting attorney general. as i say, if goderich oozing lawyers, and i. t. jeffrey clark i feel would be low on the list. >> yeah, so i guess donald trump may try to assert an advice of counsel defense and maybe jeffrey clark will try to assert me but you know we haven't a terminal offer the kind of communications that we just saw. going back and forth between jeffrey clark and scott perry. we call them coconspirator statements. they seem to have been made during the course of and in furtherance of an ongoing conspiracy to keep donald trump installed in power unlawfully and unconstitutionally, and assuming a judge a trial court agrees that the coconspirator statements, they looked that way to this old prosecutor, they would be admissible against all members of the conspiracy, and there's no doubt about it, based on the available evidence, jeffrey clark joined don trump's conspiracy by agreeing to corrupt and weaponize the department of justice and then taking an overt act, a step towards the commission of the crime, by drafting letters to the battleground states saying hey, why don't y'all just go with the fake elector thing? now, for that, jeffrey clark finds himself a coconspirator, a charge codefendant in the r. i. c. o. prosecution in georgia. scott perry, of course, had his cell phone seized, which means a federal judge found federal crime caused crime had been committed, and there was evidence of that crime and scott perry cell phone, and scott perry asked for a pardon for what he did on in around january 6th. the supreme court, albeit back in 1915, said a pardon carries with it an imputation of guilt and accepting a pardon is some confession of guilt. the next logical question, lawrence, is, is there now enough evidence to charge scott perry with being part of this conspiracy? i guess we'll have to wait and see. >> reporter: andrew, the gag orders are piling up. we have one in georgia issued last week, which is very strict, which is against one of donald trump's criminal codefendants. we now have the new york gag order upheld by the appeals court in full. they don't want to change a word of the judges gag order. we have the federal appeals court in washington d. c. awaiting their decision on judge chutkan's gag order any moment. they surely have noticed what the judges and other jurisdictions have been doing. >> absolutely. and i think that your introduction is really the place that to start, which is that you have somebody who in light of the gag order been reinstated, what does he do? he attacks the spouse of the sitting judge. and we know who donald trump is. that's not really the question. somebody who is that brazen and that lawless is somebody that we have seen over and over again. to me, the issue is sort of related to the first part of our discussion, which is how are people like jeff clark, congressman perry, senator grassley, all of these people enabling this? who on god's green earth thinks it's appropriate to attack first the judges staff, and then when there was a gag order on that, to attack the judge's wife? that is the real issue for this country, is the people who are thinking that that is something to support and enable. and i think that is really the lesson that you've pointed out in the introduction of what we should take away from this today. >> reporter: andrew weissmann, glenn kirschner, thank you both very much for starting off our discussions tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. >> reporter: coming up, more positive economic news today. pennsylvania governor will join us next. i was stuck. unresolved depression symptoms were in my way. i needed more from my antidepressant. vraylar helped give it a lift. adding vraylar to an antidepressant... is clinically proven to help relieve overall depression symptoms... ...better than an antidepressant alone. and in vraylar clinical studies, most saw no substantial impact on weight. elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. report unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. report 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